How to turn your Jeep into an official Jurassic Park vehicle

I've been reflecting a lot on JURASSIC PARK in my head a lot this past week as I've tried to make sense of SUPER 8 in my own head (hint: I didn't love it as much as JimmyO did). While a lot of the talk surrounding SUPER 8 and Spielberg naturally turns to CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, E.T. or GOONIES, there's actually quite a bit of JURASSIC in the film. The film's action sequences, well-executed despite the film's other flaws, owe quite a bit to JP in how their lit, staged and shot and it got me thinking about how perfect a piece of blockbuster entertainment JURASSIC PARK was.

I'm not the only one who's been thinking about JURASSIC PARK a lot lately. A Colorado man spent three years converting an old busted Jeep into an exact replica of one of the JURASSIC PARK jeeps. He had already worked on a Ecto-1 replica and this would be his next project:

The original Jeep cost only $4000 and he spent the next three years working it into a replica of Car #18. It took a lot of junkyard diving, ordering parts and paint jobs, but it's now road ready:

I'm not a big "movie memorabilia" guy but there's something about this Jeep that I really dig. Maybe it's that, unlike most memorabilia/replica stuff that just sits on a desk, you can actually drive this around and mess with people.